


Fragments

by crimsonepitaph



Series: Rockstars Verse [4]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Addiction, Drug Addiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 15:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17921570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonepitaph/pseuds/crimsonepitaph
Summary: Jensen is caught between his undefinable attraction to Jared and his own past





	Fragments

**Author's Note:**

> **Author's note #1:** Continues, timeline-wise, from #3, _Lines_. Jensen POV.  
>  **Author's note #2:** As always, special thanks goes to borgmama1of5, whose feedback is invaluable!

In the silence, Jensen listens. He toys with the strings of his guitar, the sliders on the distortion pedal. He alternates between crouching to adjust the sound and standing up, trying out the new settings, but the thing he’s looking for escapes him.

Instead, it’s a dissociated mess of brilliant and utterly generic, fingers slipping often, uncharacteristic, into notes that do not fit.

Chad looks at him from the other side of the glass.He makes a sign with his hands for Jensen to take the headphones off.

“You a junkie in withdrawal, too, Ackles, or what?”

Right.

Jared was the previous inhabitant. All the singer got out was a sweating, trembling, disordered sequence of words.

“Fuck off, Murray,” Jensen grits out.

The sound engineer just shrugs.

Jensen tries again.

It’s repetition drowned out by irrational, chaotic runs, structure and control replaced by feeling, raw, significance of it barely riddled out. It’s music coming out of his hands, but it’s music that Jensen doesn’t recognize.

 

~

 

The failed session ends with Chad’s fist slamming down on the set of controls, a storm off before Jensen even realizes that his current attempt at recording the guitar track for their latest song is also wrong.

He stops.

The rolling blue chair on the other side finishes the last inches of its hurried turn.

Jensen steps out of the soundproof room - but not to go after Chad. Just to pick up a bottle of water from his bag on the couch, breathe, clear his head.

And to gain the mental space to try again.

However, his attention is drawn by the voices behind the slightly open door. A ricochet into its old wooden frame was an echo of Chad’s fury; now, the inches left empty leave the opportunity for Jensen to listen in to a conversation between Padalecki and Tom.

“...you think you’ll make it this time?”

The voice is Welling’s. Flat, _what’s the weather like,_ sloppy small talk.

“Fuck you, Tom.”

Mostly, Jensen’s own thought.

Jared’s voice is muted, harsh, like he swallowed broken glass.

“I’m just trying to help you.”

There’s a pause.

“It’s okay.”

Tiredness seeps into Padalecki’s few words, all the things left unsaid, all the things that Tom should understand hanging in the air. But there is no more hope.

“You don’t need to concern yourself with me _this time,_ ” Jared spits out, last part of the sentence felt, even behind the door, like a punch. ”Never again, Tom.”

The rustle of clothes, footsteps trailing across the floor.

“Jay - “

There is no response.

Jensen closes his eyes, balls his fist at the sound of the audible sigh on the other side. Memories of similar conversations crawl back to the forefront.

It’s just anger, frustration that makes him get his piece right this time.

Staring at Tom on the other side of the glass, at the faces of everyone who’s ever told Jensen that he’s a lost cause, worthless, called him a _problem, selfish, tiring, weak -_ that, _that’s_  fuel, flame igniting at the briefest touch of the strings, fury making it crystal clear, at least for a moment, where he stands on this.

 

~

 

The hotel room is bathed in dim, artificial light.

It’s too small.

And there are no more faces to direct his anger at.

Every inch is flooded with the desire to turn back, with the craving -

_you need it_

At this point, it’s foolish.

It’s been so long.

_one, just one_

There are things that matter more than his life.

_free, free of the turmoil, you can’t help him if you’re fucked up_

But Jensen’s built himself to be resilient.

Resilient and alone.

It’s an easy trick. Avoid any kind of shit that sends him back.

_one, the feeling of it sliding down…_

He’d forget.

He’d be someone else.

_Him. The voice. The hands on the mic. The hair, sweaty, pulled back. Eyes, closed, far._

His obsessions don’t disappear, they just change over time.

_Attraction, you could throw away everything -_

_Stupid fuck -_

Jensen feels vulnerable, stranger to the sense of worthiness he’d built over the years, trapped in the same infinite spiral of thought, himself, Padalecki, wanting to help, being scared of his own past

_you won’t fix him_

It’s not about fixing.

That’s what Jensen tells himself while he paces the windowless room, studies the pale green carpet and lets the thin metal object slide over his fingers, left to right.

Right to left.

Truth.

He doesn’t know if what he’s feeling is an option to return, renege on his vow.

It all resurfaces in pieces, shards that cut to draw blood, the mere presence a reason for panic, arms numb, chest burning, head in a dense, blinding fog.

The knock on the door reminds Jensen of the rhythm he can’t abandon - breathing.

Kane’s voice urges him to hurry.

Jensen hears fragments.

“...studio…ride…leaving…”

 _Now_.

The immediate snaps him into focus.

It’s a hard fall. Jensen feels like shouting, hitting the walls, bloody his knuckles until the wound claws its way to the outside, streak the bad hotel paint job with all the pain he holds inside, _mutilate, demolish, advertise to the world to come in, he needs - to stay out, fuck - anything, just_ -

But he doesn’t do any of that.

He learned control.

Jensen slips the coin in the pocket of his jeans, grabs yesterday’s t-shirt from the floor, and greets Chris at the car with a smile that pushes everything to the back of his mind.

 

~

 

The day paints itself into a haze, crumbles under the softest touch of rational thought.

Lights dance in front of Jensen’s eyes, hues of amber liquid and clear glass. Sparks that travel from the background in each bottle, colors, focus that short-circuits the surroundings, makes them fuzzy and dark.

“What you looking at, pretty?”

Jensen turns to his left.

“ _Pretty?_ ”

The guy on the bar stool next to him is a brunette. Short legs barely reach the step, but he’s muscular, with an expression that says to Jensen that subtlety is the last thing on his mind.

A monosyllabic reply. “Yeah.”

Jensen laughs at the response, entirely unkind.

“What, you don’t like it?” the guy asks, confused, just the amount of aggressive that can’t be called out.

Jensen grins, downs the club soda. He didn’t come for this.

But he might as well do it.

“Maybe on another night.”

He leaves traces of possibility in the words, bats his eyelashes just prettily enough.

“Tonight you should call me something else.”

The guy’s earlier frown melts into a sly smile.

“What?” he grins.

It’s what Jensen had waited for all along. Fingers touch his over the bar.

“You know what, let me get you another one,” the brunette says, oblivious, stupid, unlucky.  

Jensen just looks at the stubby fingers, ignores the callouses he feels over his knuckles, the suffocating smell of _drunk._  

“Did you just touch me?”

The rhythm…the rhythm, that’s all that ever counts.

Anger, sadness, joy, insanity, cries…it’s all a song.

The first blow is Jensen’s, pain and exhilaration in equal part.

It’s unwarranted. It’s absurd. It’s exactly what he wants.

Then, staccato.

Fractured.

Strings, the strings and scars on his right arm.

Faded light above shelves filled with liquor.

Confusion.

Sounds.

Disturbing. Frustrating. Jensen can’t integrate them with the _now_.

Hands on him, on the other guy, flashes of skin.

Stools, bottles, broken glass.

Jensen wins when the guy catches the edge of the bar with the left side of his head.

It’s not a symphony. It doesn’t finish with a flourishing piece of the orchestra. The sound simply cuts out.

Jensen fixes his t-shirt, slaps a twenty in the puddle of liquid on the bar, and smiles at Kane as he heads towards the exit.

 

~

   

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Kane exhales.

Jensen fixes his gaze on the small flame igniting on the end of the cigarette.

A back alley, a circle, a judge.

“The fuck was that?” they, _him,_ ask.

Voices are just echoes of his memories, his thoughts.

But truth is, Kane’s almighty, self-righteous attitude pisses Jensen off.

Jensen shrugs, purposefully nonchalant. “He’ll be fine.”

They raise their eyebrows in disbelief.

_You going to tell me it affects the band?_

Thing is, if Jensen focuses on the smoke raising from his cigarette, he can almost travel back to the roof.

With Padalecki, without the present and the past.

 

~

 

Jared does his voice tracks at night, when the silence is the only absence that matters and _they,_ the voices, are lost between the passion for the craft.

Jensen watches from the yellow leather couch.

There are purple bruises under Padalecki’s eyes, the headphones do their own minute, small dance when they come off.

But the singer’s world remains untouched.

Like every time he hears it, Jensen slips through the cracks of Jared’s voice, finds agony and bliss in the same notes, a feeling at the edge of tangible that locks his body into a trance. The rhythm…but Jared’s isn’t a cadence, his movements, his presence, it isn’t a song.

Jensen couldn’t get the strings tuned right, he couldn’t find the pattern in the notes.

It’s the music played by Jensen’s own scars.

Louder, clearer, faded black ink outmatched.

Truth broken, the nothing built out of every piece that hurts to the touch.

 

~

 

The pocket of Jensen’s jeans holds ten years in a chip. Solid ground.

In front of him, there’s the ocean in the middle of a storm.

Jensen welcomes the shivers brought by the cold water like a second home.

 

 


End file.
